Download a full-featured office suite and HELP PEOPLE at the same time: Up until December 31, 2009, you can download an unlimited version of SoftMaker Office 2008 for Windows – free of charge and without obligations. What's more: for every successful download, SoftMaker donates 10 Euro Cents to charity projects here on betterplace.org.

Please show your support and spread the word: The more people download SoftMaker Office, the more SoftMaker will donate, and the more projects here on betterplace.org will be completed. So, please tell your friends and colleagues about this campaign.

We will account for every completed project and the money we have donated. This means that everybody can be sure that their download accomplished something good.

SoftMaker Office reads and writes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files with highest fidelity. It offers the full feature set of a high-end office suite and works beautifully even on older computers and on netbooks. It can even be copied to a USB flash drive and then runs on any Windows computer without installation.

This suite is the same as the Ashampoo office suite, and has been regularly offered for well under $10. At that price, it's far superior to OpenOffice. And with this offer, making it free, I just can't see any reason to consider OpenOffice.

Obviously, MS Office remains the 800-lb gorilla. But if you don't need to use it, then SoftMaker is a great alternative. IMHO, it's far more usable than OO. It's much smaller, too, which makes a difference for portable installations. And it's a complete suite, unlike other apps like AbiWord.

I thought I'd mention that a year or so ago, I installed SoftMaker Office 2008 when they were giving it away for a limited period. I liked it quite a bit and stopped using Microsoft Office. In July 2010, I got an email from SoftMaker telling me that as a registered user of an older "free version," I was being invited to upgrade to SoftMaker 2010 for €29.95 or US $34.95. Moreover, for a few days they were offering an extra 15% Soccer World Cup discount on the already discounted price. So I wound up buying SoftMaker 2010 for $29.71. I've been very happy with it.

I mention this because it's quite possible that the company will again make special offers to registered users of SoftMaker 2008. If they do, you may be able to upgrade to SoftMaker 2010 for a lot less than the current upgrade price. Also, if you are a student or teacher, you don't have to wait for a special offer; the company's academic price is €29.95 or US $34.95. I don't know whether that price includes the VAT.